Yes, I know I’m breaking my own rule about not using unflattering photos of Hillary Cinton, a pledge I made during the 2016 Presidential campaign I think—it might have been earlier. She deserves it in this instance.

I feel genuine compassion for Hillary, just as I do for Al Gore (and Samuel J. Tilden) up to a point. It must be terrible to win the popular vote for President of the United States and lose the election. I think it must be a little like what I am trying to deal with right now after waking up one morning and finding my wife dead.

Hillary is bitter and angry, and I understand that. The ethical mandate in such a situation is to strive to deal with these emotions with dignity, and, in her position as a public figure that many Americans admire and respect (mistakenly), to serve as a role model for everyone else who finds themselves suddenly losing something or someone that assumed they had firmly and safely in their embrace.

She’s failed that mandate spectacularly and repeatedly. Clinton lost the Presidency, not only by the quirk of the Electoral College, but also through her own perfidy, arrogance and incompetence, yet she refuses to take responsibility for any of that. In her view, at least publicly, it is all Donald Trump’s fault, along with the”deplorables” who voted for him. From the moment she learned that she had lost the 2016 election in a stunning upset, Clinton has set out to do everything and anything she can to hurt him, beginning with declaring his election illegitimate, spawning the Russian collusion investigation that crippled his Presidency, and using every opportunity to trigger the Trump Deranged with inevitably diminishing returns.

I get that chill one feels when one narrowly misses being bit by a bus every time I think about how close I came to voting for her in 2016. I knew how awful she was; I had for many years, highlighted by when it became clear that she announced to Matt Lauer on national television that the Monica Lewinsky scandal had been engineered by a “vast right wing conspiracy” even though she knew that the allegations were true. She also knew her sociopathic, co-dependent, habitually adulterous spouse had engineered his own political crisis because he “couldn’t keep it in his pants,” to use the technical term, but would be complicit in his cover-up (no pun intended) because of her own political aspirations. It was only after I learned, almost literally at the last minute, that Clinton’s party was corrupt beyond my wildest fantasies and was cheating to win the White House (thanks to those fortunate hacks of John Podesta’s computer) that I decided not to vote for either major party nominee.

Close call! Since that decision, Clinton’s unethical character as well as her party’s metastasizing totalitarian culture have become more evident, undeniable and alarming, though Hillary, at least, is diminished by age and time. My sister, who held her nose and voted for her, keeps telling me that she doesn’t understand why I or anyone else cares what Hillary does or says at this point.

My sister has a valid point. I have to pay attention to Clinton when she sets off an ethics alarm significantly loud to justify, in my ethics-fevered mind , a notice here. And that’s what Hillary did on a podcast two days ago hosted by Democratic election lawyer Mark Ellis. She said, among other rants,

“…Putin does what Trump would like to do: Kill his opposition, imprison his opposition, drive journalists and others into exile, rule without any check or balance.”

Well. I can’t let THAT pass, no matter how much I pity the wretch:

• This is in the sub-category, when it is indulged in by journalists and pundits, of fake news I call “psychic news.” Those who wield this unethical device seek to demonize others, particularly Donald Trump, by supposedly revealing what he’s thinking, intends, believes, or wants to do. It’s an irresponsible opinion presented as a fact, and therefore a lie. Hillary doesn’t know what Trump “wants.” She is welcome to her opinion, but she is obligated to present it as an opinion so stupid and gullible people, of which we have many millions (and continuing to idolize Hillary Clinton is strong evidence that one belongs to that problematic group) won’t assume it is a fact because wonderful Hillary said so….as if the woman hasn’t been repeatedly wrong or dishonest about too many topics to list.
• Talk about projection! Is there any doubt that if Hillary could make Donald Trump disappear, or better yet, die in unimaginable agony, without facing any negative consequences that she would do it so fast that there would be a sonic boom?
• That accusation takes special chutzpah, when you consider that no Trump foes or potential adversaries have died under mysterious circumstances raising questions about his involvement, but the conspiracy theories that the Clintons have been offing inconvenient and threatening associates have been around since the Nineties, beginning with the death of Vince Foster. There’s even a Wikipedia entry about the “Clinton Body Count.” Has Hillery never heard the expression that begins, “People in glass houses…”? Apparently not.
• “Imprison the opposition”? IMPRISON THE OPPOSITION? Wow. Does Hillary pay any attention to the news? She said this on the very day a jury was being selected to determine the outcome of a prosecution initiated by her party to imprison Donald Trump!
• Almost every President the United States has wished at one time or another that they could “rule without any check or balance.” That’s my opinion (informed by study and research), but it is fact that several Presidents have indicated this exact attitude by their words or conduct. Here’s a pundit explaining why he thinks then-President Barack Obama wishes he were a king. Lincoln, Wilson and FDR, with their powers expanded in wartime, exceeded the limits on Presidential authority to frightening degrees, with Roosevelt doing so even before the war. When the Supreme Court imposed limits on his power, FDR’s first impulse was to pack the Supreme Court.  Is there any doubt that Nixon would have  loved to “rule without any check or balance”? Teddy Roosevelt would have as well. Andrew Jackson wasn’t dubbed “King Andy” for nothing: bolstered by a large Democratic majority in Congress, he did rule that way, even defying the Supreme Court.  Almost all of the elected Presidents have been narcissists convinced of their own superiority to ordinary Americans: one doesn’t become President of the United States without that conviction. John Adams? Ike? I can think of two Presidents only of whom I can confidently say probably never wished they could wield the powers of an absolute—but beneficent and wise!—dictator: George Washington, and William Howard Taft.

My sister is right: Hillary Clinton is a sad, bitter, increasingly irrelevant figure who should have the decency to slink off into quiet retirement. She is choosing instead to sow division and hate to whatever limited extent she still can. That choice will color her legacy, and it should.